Taste Testing Offers Pick of the Fruit Tree Crop

The term “garden variety” means commonplace or ordinary, but ‘Eva’s Pride,’ a garden variety peach, is anything but that. It tastes so sweet that you might wonder what you are eating if it weren’t for the peach fuzz and that distinctive peach taste. It is so juicy that wearing a bib is not a bad idea.

Still, ‘Eva’s Pride’ didn’t even make the top 20 on a list of best-tasting fruit varieties compiled by Dave Wilson Nursery, a fruit tree grower. For seven years this wholesale supplier has been evaluating the taste and appearance of home and commercial varieties of fruit. The tests introduce tasty home-grown fruit to participating gardeners and help the nursery decide which varieties to grow.

Earlier this month I joined one of these evaluations--the first held by the nursery in Southern California. (Most tastings are held in Northern or Central California.) A morning session of serious tasting at the Anaheim Convention Center was set aside for nursery people, and the public was invited to an afternoon sampling. The room was filled with fruit--the sampling included new and old garden varieties--carefully packed in crush-proof cartons, most of it picked fresh the day before.

I sampled early- and mid-season apricots, Pluots (plum-apricot hybrids), plums, peaches and nectarines. At my tasting table were Ron Ono of Blue Hills Nursery in Whittier and Frank Burkard of Burkard Nurseries in Pasadena. We were provided with crackers, water, a sharp, serrated knife and lots of napkins.

We dutifully made notes on the attractiveness, maturity, texture, acidity, sweetness and overall flavor of 29 fruits trotted out for tasting and evaluation. This was a blind tasting, and some grocery-store varieties were included for comparison. But we didn’t know which were which until after the event.

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Taste is normally not a priority with commercial growers. Farmers grow a specific variety because it ripens at a time when they can get a good price for the fruit, or because it ships well, or looks good displayed at the market.

But taste is everything for the home grower. Well, almost everything. First, you must be able to grow it in your locale.

Most deciduous fruit trees, such as peaches and plums, do not fruit in our mild climate. This is especially true the closer you live to the coast. The ones that fruit are called “low-chill varieties.” Dave Wilson Nursery, near Modesto in California’s Central Valley, gets a lot more hours of chill in winter than do nurseries here, but the grower brought along some low-chill varieties that would fruit in our mild weather.

The highlight of the morning was some low-chill varieties of peaches and nectarines that were quite tasty, even superb. One nectarine variety had such a distinctive taste that it was otherworldly.

The new white-fleshed variety is named ‘Arctic Star’ (and only needs 300 hours of chilling). It had a sweetness that I can’t describe, and it was still firm, not mushy-ripe. Weeks later, I can still taste it, or imagine I can. I’m told its taste is unique because it was “bred to be different” by developer Zaiger Genetics.

‘Desert Delight’ (requiring only 100-200 hours of chilling) had a traditional nectarine taste but it was almost as delicious. On my scorecard, both nectarines rated nines on their rating scale of one to nine.

When it came to peaches, we tried a common, older, naturally dwarf peach variety named ‘Bonanza,’ but it didn’t score well. I gave it a score of average and thought I was being kind. Then we tried ‘Eva’s Pride,’ which needs only 100 to 200 hours of chilling, making it a good bet down here, even near the coast. Our table thought this one was great and even set aside a few fruits to munch on later. Even its interior color, washed with red, is exciting.

‘Tropic Snow’ was another low-chill variety (200 hours) that I rated “not especially attractive” but with “very good” taste. It was delicious.

We tried several plum-apricot hybrids (Pluots) that were quite interesting, but most of these need more winter cold than we have here. Nurseryman Ono said that at his home in Yorba Linda his Pluots didn’t bear any fruit this year. But we also sampled a regular plum named ‘Beauty,’ which can be grown here. It was tastier than any of the hybrids, with the exception of a new plum-peach hybrid that’s not yet available.

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There were also a few apricots to sample, but none passed muster, in my opinion. Having grown up in an apricot orchard, I like to think I know what an apricot should taste like (I’ve certainly picked my share). It’s not just fond remembering either--a neighbor recently brought me some delicious cots from his tree (which he thinks is a dwarf variety named ‘Aprigold’).

After the tasting, I came home and looked everywhere in my garden for a sunny spot to grow one of those otherworldly nectarines but couldn’t find one that wasn’t already occupied by citrus, or berries, or my extra-dwarf ‘Anna’ apple. The apple and the berries take up little room, because they grow among the flowers, and I’m not about to take out any citrus because they are the most useful of fruit trees: Citrus don’t ripen all their fruit at once, but hang onto it for months, providing a steady supply.

I grow few deciduous fruit trees because the last peach I had, a delicious one named ‘Red Baron,’ took up lots of space and overwhelmed us with fruit each summer (often while we were on vacation).

The Dave Wilson Nursery, however, has been compiling age-old and new ways of growing fruit in small spaces--putting several in the same hole, controlling size with fancy pruning techniques and using multiple grafts--so you can fit more trees on your property and grow several kinds that ripen at various times to spread out the harvest.

If your yard isn’t already full of fruit trees, “Backyard Orchard Culture” is available at https://www.davewilson.com, or you can write or call Dave Wilson Nursery at 19701 Lake Road, Hickman, CA 95323; (800) 654-5854.

The nursery can also send you the “2000 Fruit Tasting Report,” a summary of all their tastings, if you want to know more about which garden varieties taste best. Unfortunately, many of the taste champions won’t fruit here--at least in the coastal plain--like the No. 1 tasting fruit, another white nectarine named ‘Arctic Jay.’ It needs 800 hours of chilling, hard to provide in the Southland.

The nursery plans tastings next year at several places in the Southland for those who want to experience firsthand how good garden varieties can taste. We’ll publish the times and places next year in garden calendar.

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Garden Calendar

* Taste more than 45 varieties of tomatoes and peppers (bring a properly identified tomato or pepper to share), and tour the vegetable test gardens at the Children’s Garden and Kitchen Garden, Saturday, 10 a.m.-noon, at Fullerton Arboretum, Associated Road at Yorba Linda Boulevard, Fullerton. (714) 278-3579. Free.

* Landscape designer Kelly Kubica talks about successful shade gardens, Saturday, 10 a.m.-noon, at Descanso Gardens, 1418 Descanso Drive, La Canada Flintridge. (818) 952-4401; https://www.descanso.com. $18.

* Children’s workshop on the friendly fish called koi, Saturday, 9-11:30 a.m., at Huntington Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. https://www.huntington.org. $12 includes materials and admission for one accompanying adult. Call (626) 405-2128.

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Send garden announcements to Garden Events, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, at least three weeks before the event date.

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Write to Robert Smaus, SoCal Living, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012; fax to (213) 237-4712; or e-mail robert.smaus@latimes.com.